1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pull-out guide for a drawer or the like and more particularly, to a new and improved drawer guide for supporting a moveable structure such as a drawer in a furniture article, the drawer guide including a guide rail having a rotatable guide rail roller, which guide rail is mountable to the furniture article in a generally horizontally disposed position, and a pull-out rail for carrying the moveable structure, which pull-out rail has a pull-out rail upper ledge in rolling contact with the guide rail roller enabling forward and rearward horizontal movement of the pull-out rail and carried structure, and the pull-out rail is provided with a pull-out rail retaining member engaging the guide rail roller in a rearward position of the pull-out rail resisting forward movement of the pull-out rail.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Various types of pull-out drawer guides have been used in furniture such as cabinets, desks and the like for supporting drawers and similar moveable structures for many years. One such type of drawer guides has guide rails mountable to the furniture article and pull-out rails carrying the moveable structure, both of which are provided with rollers. The pull-out rail may support a drawer, a bin, a board or the like, and the respective rollers enable the pull-out guide and carried structure to be moved freely and without resistance between a forward, open position and a rearward, closed position.
A disadvantage of such type of drawer guides is that there is nothing to prevent accidental opening of the closed drawer during normal use, and moreover, there is nothing to prevent the drawer from falling completely out when the furniture article is tipped over from a normally disposed vertical position, for example, by accidental upsetting of an unanchored cabinet such as a roll-around type cabinet or, for example, during handling and shipping of a cabinet.
There is a current need to provide a pull-out drawer guide which prevents accidental opening of the closed drawer during normal use and also prevents the drawer from falling out when the furniture article is tipped over, while retaining the simplicity and costs associated with the design and manufacture of such drawer guides within the same range as presently experienced with conventional drawer guides.
While improved pull-out drawer guides of the type disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,564,248, which provides parallel run-in slopes on the guide rail and the pull-out rail to enable self-closing under the weight of the pull-out rail and carried drawer, partially address this need, the usefulness of such drawer guides is limited in that the design of such pull-out drawer guides provides little, if any, resistance to accidental opening under normal conditions, and more importantly, such drawer guides cannot prevent the drawer from opening or falling out when the furniture article is tipped over from a normally disposed vertical upright position.
The present invention addresses this need and provides a pull-out drawer guide for use in a furniture article which is designed to resist forward movement of the pull-out rail in the rearward, closed position of the pull-out rail and carried drawer, preventing accidental opening under normal conditions and preventing the drawer from opening or falling out when the furniture article is tipped from an upright position.